Immigrants' families get tripped up by E-2 visas

Some hope for path to permanent residency

Nina Mold, below, the owner of Top Performance hair salon in the Green Tree plaza moved her family from England to Naples in 2003 on an E-2 visa, which allows foreign investors to start a small business. The visa allowed Mold to bring her daughters as dependents, but only allows them to stay until they turn 21. Mold’s oldest daughter, Stephanie, 18, is a freshman at FGCU. The family is worried that she will not be able to finish school and will have to travel back to England on her own.

Daily News

A childhood dream to move to the U.S. could tear apart Nina Mold's family.

Without reform to immigration legislation, her eldest daughter, Stephanie, an 18-year-old freshman at Florida Gulf Coast University, will have to leave the country in less than three years.

Florida is the second most-popular destination for the tens of thousands of foreigners who come to the U.S. on the E-2, a visa for foreign investors to start small businesses in the U.S.

Attracted by the good weather and favorable exchange rate, many European families set up shops in service-oriented Naples on the E-2.

When she moved to Naples with her husband and two daughters in 2003 from England, Mold was aware that the visa they came on – the E-2 – would only include their children until the age of 21 and couldn't lead to permanent residency.

In a bout of wishful thinking, Mold thought she would be able to get her children to stay on, somehow.

"Yes, we understood it, but I think most of us thought that once we got here, we would find a way. We didn't believe that it was as black-and-white as it seemed," she said.

Mold lived in Virginia from age 8 to 16, but when her mother and stepfather divorced, the teenager returned to the UK. Even so, she kept the goal of moving back to the U.S.

Five years ago, she and her husband of 22 years decided the time was right to fulfill her childhood dream. The family pooled their savings and sold their home and cars to purchase Top Performance hair salon in the Green Tree plaza on Immokalee Road.

"We were very naïve then. I had kind of filled my family's head with my dream. It was me, I did it. You know, drip, drip, drip over time. A new life in America, living in the sun," she said.

Between application and lawyers' fees, the relocation and the purchase of the salon, moving to the U.S. cost the Molds around $250,000, she estimated.

"We laid it all down to come here. So strong was the need to come here for me. I did that to them, I made them want this," she said.

Four years after moving to the country, Mold has waded into the American political system and is fighting for reform.

In January, she will travel with several E-2 visa holders to Washington, D.C., to lobby for a path to permanent residency.

The change she most supports is H.R. 2310, sponsored in May of this year by Reps. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and Sue Wilkins Myrick, R-N.C., to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act.

If passed, the resolution would make E-2 visa holders who have resided in the U.S. for at least five years eligible to adjust to permanent resident status, according to congressional documents.

It is currently under review in a House subcommittee.

But a resolution lodged in Congress is little consolation for Nina's daughter, Stephanie, who graduated from Gulf Coast High School in the spring. She knows her days in the U.S. are numbered.

"It came up when we first moved here that it might not be permanent," the history and English major said.

"At 14 years old, we were too young to understand the complications," Mold's daughter said.

For now, she qualifies for the Florida Bright Futures scholarship, which covers 75 percent of school costs – which still means $2,000 a semester in fees.

When she turns 21, she will have to apply for a new visa as an international student and will be ineligible for the same funding; she doesn't know how she will finish her degree without the scholarship.

And once her degree is complete, she doesn't know how she will stay in the U.S.

"I'll have to go back (to England) again. I don't have the money to invest in a business and my parents can't help me out (financially)," Stephanie said.

She added, "I don't think things will change soon."

Her mother fails to see the logic in the system.

As a local business investor, she pays taxes.

Her youngest daughter, Natalie, 14, still attends public school.

"The American taxpayer has paid for their education, basically, and then they are going to throw them out when they are 21. Isn't that a false economy? You've invested in these children, why don't you want them to stay?" Nina Mold said.

The numbers indicate that despite the challenges of the E-2, foreigners continue to be lured. From 1998 to 2006, the number of E-2 visas granted increased 75 percent, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics.

Last year, of the 164,795 E-2 visas issued, 9.9 percent were to United Kingdom citizens; only Japan and Germany received more.

Florida is the second-most-popular destination after California for E-2 holders. In 2006, nearly 20,000 foreign business investors with the visa were destined for the Sunshine State.

Anne Boland estimates her family has spent around $100,000 in attorney fees in the past four years dealing with their visas and their November 2003 move to Naples from the UK.

"If not for the children here and settled, I would have gone home. It's been that awful," said Boland, a UK national whose husband owns an E-2 medical supply sales business in Naples.

After several visits to the area, they fell in love with the country, she said, adding: "We liked the entrepreneurial spirit."

Boland, her husband, and their two youngest children first came on an L-1 visa, which could have culminated in a green card. When they went to renew the visa in 2004, their nascent Naples business was declared "marginal" by immigration officials, and as such, the visa wasn't granted.

"It was a bolt from the blue," Boland said. "We couldn't understand why we had been denied.''

The family appealed, but they were denied again and told they had 30 days to leave the country.

"It was my dream to come to the U.S. It turned into the nightmare," Boland said.

In an effort to stay in the U.S. and not pull their two youngest children out of high school again, the Bolands switched to an E-2 visa.

"It wasn't what we wanted" because it precluded them from applying for permanent residency.

"We knew the consequences were… (but) we were backed into a corner… We have nowhere to go to in the UK. Everything we own is in the U.S.," Boland said.

Their three oldest children remain in the UK; Christopher, in his early 20s, runs an E-2 boat detailing company business in Naples.

But the countdown for their son, Garreth, who studies vocal performance at FGCU, is imminent; he turns 21 in May. After him comes his younger sister, Elizabeth, 18, who is an early childhood development major at the university.

Like Mold, Boland hoped that by the time Garreth turned 21, reform would have happened.

"It's a better life, certainly for our younger children," Anne Boland said. "I have no qualms about having brought them here; it's been an amazing experience for them."

The family's immigration attorney will attempt to get them back onto the L-1 visa and the green card track, but Boland said she isn't holding her breath.

"I'm not even asking for citizenship. We just want to be permanent residents and not have to keep thinking short-term," she said.

The hopes that Mold and Boland keep harboring are likely in vain, said a law professor at the University of Miami.

"There is no foreseeable change in the law that would allow the adult children to have immigration benefits," said David Abraham, a professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Miami School of Law.

At that point, "you are not the same family, you are a relative once you are an adult," Abraham explained. "That's what they signed onto. That's what they applied for… They were never given reason to believe otherwise."